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Friday, October 16, 2015

16 October 2015 A.D. Jewel’s “Apology”—“And will ye say that Christ and the Apostles meant with subtlety to deceive the people when they exhorted them to read the Holy Scriptures

16 October 2015
A.D. Jewel’s “Apology”—“And will ye say that Christ and
the Apostles meant with subtlety to deceive the people when they exhorted them
to read the Holy Scriptures, that thereby they might flow in all wisdom and
knowledge? No marvel at all though these men [Romanists] despise us and
all our doings, which set so little by God Himself and His infallible sayings.”
p.107

What then shall I say here, O ye principal posts of
religion, O ye arch-governors of Christ’s Church! Is this that your
reverence which ye give to God’s Word? The Holy Scriptures, which, St.
Paul saith, came by the inspiration of God, which God did commend by so many
miracles, wherein are the most perfect prints of Christ’s own steps, which all
the holy fathers, Apostles, and Angels, which Christ Himself the Son of God, as
often as was needful, did allege for testimony and proof; will ye, as though
they were unworthy for you to hear, bid them avaunt away? That is, will
ye enjoin God to keep silence, who speaketh to you most clearly by His own
mouth in the Scriptures? or that Word, whereby alone, as Paul saith, we are
reconciled to God, and which the prophet David saith, is “holy and pure, and
shall last for ever;” will ye call that “but a bare and dead letter?” or will ye say that all our labour is lost which is bestowed in
that thing which Christ hath commanded us diligently to search, and to have
evermore before our eyes? And will ye say that Christ and the Apostles
meant with subtlety to deceive the people when they exhorted them to read the
Holy Scriptures, that thereby they might flow in all wisdom and
knowledge? No marvel at all though these men despise us and all our
doings, which set so little by God Himself and His infallible sayings. Yet
was it but want of wit in them, to the intend they might hurt us, to do so
extreme injury to the Word of God.